As a Houston resident, I can’t help but be exposed to the advertising and promotion of our home town airline, Continental Airlines.
Recently they went through a massive undertaking, of switching airline alliances from SkyTeam to the Star Alliance. Recently, I attended a recent Corporate Forum event, hosted by Continental, and learned more about the changeover – and it made me realize what a massive undertaking this was not only from an operations point of view – but also a marketing, communications and PR view.
It was a lot more than simply taking off the SkyTeam insignia that was emblazoned everywhere (web-site, lapel pins, stationary, decals on the airplanes, etc). As you listen to the staff, they’re excited, well educated and proud of the new alliance. And as frequent fliers, we should be excited about the expanded opportunity it presents us.
Continental invested in their staff…and re-educated them on their updated brand promise with Star.
While the process of changeover took 18 months (I believe) to plan – it was executed – OVERNIGHT with all SkyTeam visuals removed (Ugh – can you imagine!) This was the first time an airline had ever executed such a massive change. We’re now seeing “Star Alliance” livery on several of the Continental Fleet!
From a marketing point of view, the Continental team is very savvy – I just love their play on word advertising campaigns – and their current “You’re about to receive the Star treatment” is genius. I recently came back from a trip to Tokyo – and all staff members, both on the ground and on-board were very excited about promoting the new alliance, and constantly used this phrase. LOL.
Continental took advantage of Twitter on the launch week, by asking users to tweet phrases such as “Get the Star Treatment from Continental” - the promotion to tweet this – 2 round trip BusinessFirst Tickets…ummm yeah – I tweeted – but sadly didn’t win the tickets!
I now want to go on a ‘round the world’ trip – which is promoted on the star alliance web-site…and now, (because of the alliance) for the first time my Dad can fly from Aberdeen to Houston without having to have a separate ticket for the London to Aberdeen portion – hurray!
Congratulations Continental on an amazing branding achievement!!
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